Special Rights for Believers in Berkeley

Church Burial Rights Gain Support in Berkeley

Forget all that stuff about “godless Berkeley.”

Truth be told, only the churched will be interred here, if new regulations passed last week by Berkeley’s Planning Commission are approved by the City Council, likely in early February.

Commissioners approved language for a new ordinance to allow ashes of cremated corpses—“cremains” in the trade language mocked by the late Jessica Mitford, whose ashes couldn’t have been kept in Berkeley—to stay in the city, but only in columbaria on property maintained for religious assembly.

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Berkeley churches—but not non-churches—would be able have them, thanks to City Councilmember Laurie Capi-telli, who requested the action on behalf of his constituents at Northbrae Community Church, which is located at 941 The Alameda.

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“It seems a little strange to me that only people who are churched can have their ashes in Berkeley,” she said. “That does seem to me to be a problem.”

And it’s also a problem for David Silverman, the national spokesperson of the American Atheists. The organization has fought legal battles for the rights of the godless for the last 45 years.

“There are lots of atheists in Berkeley, and now they have fewer rights than people who believe in an invisible man in the sky,” he said. “This is essentially a two-class system, with religious people obeying one set of laws and non-religious people another.”

And it’s not just atheists who wouldn’t want to be buried on church property. “Neither do pagans or Jews or Moslems,” he said.

Silverman said the new Berkeley regulations were part of a disturbing trend in federal and local regulations granting churches expanded rights unavailable to the churchless.

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